Its tough being a conservative on Twitter.
Everywhere you look, those damn liberals are censoring right-wingers for dropping truth bombs based onfacts, not feelings.
At least, thats what Ive heard from conservativepunditsandpoliticians.The reality, however, is acting like rather different.
Anew studyby Twitter found that the platformsalgorithmsactuallyamplifyright-wing voices.
The research revealed thattweets from right-wing politicians and news outlets are both amplified on Twitters algorithmically ranked Home timeline.
However, the social connection isnt sure why.
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Whats next is a root cause analysis is this unintended model bias?
Twitter is a sociotechnical system our algos are responsive to whats happening.
Whats next is a root cause analysis is this unintended model bias?
Notably, however, the recommender systems did not amplify extreme ideologies over more moderate ones.
The researchers also analyzed whether the recommendation algorithms amplify political content from news outlets in the US.
To this, theyexamined hundreds of millions of Tweets containing links to articles shared by people on Twitter.
They found that right-leaning news sources were also favoured by the algorithmic system.
Twitters study isnot the firstto contradict the claim that conservatives are suppressed on social media.Or the second.Or the third.
It is, however, unusual for a platform to share so much internal research into algorithmic recommendations.
I find it hard to imagine Facebook providing similar transparency.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
